Isaiah 64:1-9 and Mark 13:24-37

Let us Pray - Creator and maker of us all - bless the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts - grow thou in us and show us your ways and inspire us to live by your truth. Amen

I imagine that each of us can remember what happened when we were students back in school and the teacher announced that she was just going to step out of the class for a minute.

I am sure you can remember words like

"Now class, I'm going down the hall to the office to make a call. While I am gone I am going to trust each one of you to act like ladies and gentlemen. Each of you have your work to do - I am going now and I'll be right back."

And I am sure you can remember what happened after she got out the door.

When the teacher is away, there is a test, a test that many people failed.

In my school days I remember vividly that all heck broke loose. Some kids worked - or tried to - while other kids made spit-balls, paper air-planes, and other missiles; others wandered around between the desks - talking to one, poking another, and so forth.

Sometimes the whole affair got organized - one or two kids would stand near the door, listening for the teachers return, while their buddies ransacked the room, wrote notes on the board, or did something to one of the teachers books.

My friends, right now the teacher is away - we are living between times, in the times between Christ's first coming -as a babe in the manger and his second coming - as Lord and Judge.

We live between beginnings. And the question that the gospel poses for us today, while we are in this state is quite simply: are we going to pass the test set for us by our teacher's absence? Or are we going to fail that test - just as so many of us did back when we were in school?

The way I figure it - most of the New Testament is concerned with the problem of God's absence. When Jesus was here with us in the flesh - that was one thing. But in his absence, in the time between his first Advent and the next - what of our discipleship?

Things between us and God tend to be fine, when we are in here, at worship, eating the bread, drinking the wine, touching and tasting the goodness, the near presence of God. But what about later, when you walk out the church door and you are back in the world? What then?

Isn't a little bit like it was back in our school days? Some do their work - some can be trusted, and some can not.

You know - the amazing thing about our faith - is the faith that God puts in us.

Especially when you consider how so many of us behave.

Yet, even so, God has put us in charge of the classroom, each with our own work to do, and all he says to us as He does this is "do a good job - behave well - and be alert for my return."

Christ is coming again, and we need him to come again, too many of his class have become unruly.

But, while we long for his return, as Israel longed for his coming in the Old Testament reading this morning, while we long for the time when the classroom will be a place of harmony and peace - for the time when all things will be finally straightened out, the time when the wicked will perish and the faithful at last receive their reward, while we long for this time, we need not be overly concerned about just when it will come we need not worry because we have our work to do in the meantime and because we can trust God to honour that work, and to keep his promise to be merciful and kind to those who have lived by faith in him.

The teacher will come, and the faithful and the unfaithful alike will see him coming, they will see him coming with his angels in the clouds with great power and glory - and the angels will be sent out to gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven, and there will be justice, and there will be peace - a peace greater than that which came when our earthly school teachers returned to their classes - a justice more just than that which was meted out when the teacher opened her classroom door to behold what her students had done.

This is our hope. This is our Christian faith. And this is the time in which we show our Lord that we can be trusted.